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As the end of the year looms up like the handle of a rake I’ve just stepped on, I recall the preceding 12 months as a period characterised by a steep erosion of trust and a sinking feeling that nothing is to be taken at face value. We subsist on a steady diet of lies, distortion and AI slop. Everything is getting stupider, including me.
That’s why, when it comes to examining the year, I choose to reckon with nothing but cold, hard numbers. Here, then, is how things stand for me, statistically, at the close of 2025.
66.6% Adult sons currently living under my roof. This is up sharply from 0% this time last year, and represents an abrupt reversal of a long-term trend: the outward migration of offspring.
27 Books I’ve read this year. I didn’t start keeping a list on my phone to impress people. I did it because in September I suddenly realised I couldn’t remember anything about any of the books I’d read recently, including the titles and authors’ names. When I wrote a column about this, someone suggested keeping a tally might help. The list itself proved to be a major investigative undertaking, which involved combing through online order histories, reviewing my book club’s WhatsApp and trying to judge from its position on the bookshelf whether I finished Moby Dick in early 2025, late 2024 or never.
The total is provisional: I am reading a book I may well finish before midnight on New Year’s Eve. Don’t ask me what it’s called.
14 Times I’ve told the single joke I wrote in 2025, to the total bewilderment of listeners. The only reason I didn’t tell it more often was because it requires the participation of a willing comic foil, and most people I know want no part of it. If you haven’t heard it, it goes like this:
Me: “You know, they said I’d really like that spreadable Calabrian sausage that’s so trendy right now.”
Comic foil: “Nduja?”
Me: “I can take it or leave it.”
I have now reluctantly retired the joke, because it seems there just aren’t enough people who both know of the spreadable Calabrian sausage called nduja, and also know that it’s pronounced in a way that could conceivably be mistaken for someone saying “and do ya?”
There are, however, dozens of people who claim the J in nduja is actually pronounced with a soft “zh” sound in Calabria itself, thus rendering my joke null and void. I know this because they all emailed me.
3.5 Hours, of the 8,760 available in 2025, that I spent watching the YouTube channel of a man who calls himself Steve Roofer. Steve specialises in showing you the many ways a flat roof can go wrong, and his channel was recommended to me by my own roofer, Mike, who thought it would help me understand some of the ways my flat roof had gone wrong: shoddy installation, insufficient insulation, improper ventilation, all leading to a buildup of condensation. I guess he thought I would find it comforting, and to be honest, I did.
2 People who have expressed delight at being mentioned in this column in 2025. This doesn’t happen very often, but I recently received a thank you card from a couple, saying they were thrilled to be mentioned, even though they didn’t actually appear as speaking characters – they were only unnamed lunch guests who didn’t turn up because it turned out we had actually invited them to dinner. If they’re happy, I’m happy, even if I had to cook twice.
1 People who have expressed fury at not being mentioned in this column in 2025. On this occasion, it was my fault. When my wife started plotting to eject me from our book club in November, I mentioned every single member except one. I mentioned my wife, because her invidious scheming was central to the story. I mentioned Sasha, because she made a disparaging reference to me in the WhatsApp group; I mentioned Emma, because she said something in my defence; I mentioned Suzy, because book club was at her house that week; I even mentioned Fran for some reason, even though she didn’t come to book club.
But I forgot to mention Nicola, and as a result she’s livid. If I had to make a prediction for 2026, it’s that I will be looking for a new book club.
Happy new year.
